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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25265719">deep end</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebreathing_bitchqueen/pseuds/firebreathing_bitchqueen'>firebreathing_bitchqueen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wayhaven Week 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Wayhaven Chronicles - Mishka Jenkins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Prompt Fic, did i give my MC this name so her insta handle could be HollandOatez?, i was gonna write smut but chickened out, playin fast and loose with these prompts but whatever, post book 2, wayhaven week 2020, yes i did</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:21:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>955</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25265719</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebreathing_bitchqueen/pseuds/firebreathing_bitchqueen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>During yet another sleepless night at the Warehouse, the detective heeds the call of the abyss. </p>
<p>(Wayhaven Week, Day 3: Abyss.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wayhaven Week 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830454</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>deep end</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>What if (somehow) this line had happened outside of the LT route (technically, I guess this could take place in the LT, but I am weak and that route breaks my heart, so I can’t be in that headspace, y’all.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up…</em>
</p>
<p>Fyodor Dostoyevsky, <em>The Brothers Karamazov</em></p>
<p>###</p>
<p>
  <em>“I quite like the idea of you waking me up in the middle of the night.”</em>
</p>
<p>His words had immediately seared themselves into Holland’s brain, teasing and suggestive, the memory of them tugging at her spine, pooling in her belly, warm and insistent even now.</p>
<p>It was that feeling, that memory, that had pushed her onward, that shimmery bubble of <em>want</em> swelling in her stomach that had propelled her out of her room and into the hallway of the warehouse, towards Nate’s room. She’d lost count of the number of nights she had spent there at this point, persuaded – more easily than she might admit – that the weather was too treacherous, or the hour grown too late for her to venture the scant distance across Wayhaven back to her own apartment. Holland, who had so prized and jealously guarded her privacy, her protective cocoon of solitude, had found herself looking for reasons to stay at the warehouse lately. Watching movies with Felix and encouraging Mason’s dark humor. Strategizing a case with Adam. Letting Nate read to her in the library when she couldn’t sleep, too often these days, her head in his lap, his fingers threaded in her hair, until she drifted.</p>
<p>Tonight was another sleepless one, too, but not from any nightmares.</p>
<p>No, tonight was sleepless from a different quality of dreaming.</p>
<p>She had scarcely raised her hand to knock, knuckles only just making contact with the wood when the door swept open, Nate’s long frame filling the empty slice of doorway. His hair was mussed from sleep, dark eyes languorous and dreamy, pajamas so cozily rumpled that Holland had to fight the urge to reach for them, for him, to wrap her arms around his torso and see how sleep-warm his body must surely be.</p>
<p>“Holland? Is everything all right?” He asked, tilting his head and darting his eyes across her face.</p>
<p>“Yes,” she breathed, willing her brain to stay silent and let her body and that insistent tug at her spine, her belly, keep driving her forward.</p>
<p>His lips curved slightly in a ghost of a smile. “Did you need something?” He swept the door wider. “Please, come in.”</p>
<p>She stepped over the threshold and inhaled. He was still watching her, curiosity and something that looked almost like amusement – fondness? – flickering in his eyes.</p>
<p>She wanted to see something else in his eyes tonight. And she didn’t want it to be a flicker of something she couldn’t quite place.</p>
<p>“Did you mean it?”</p>
<p>“Pardon?” Now all she saw was clear puzzlement. He pressed the door shut behind her with a gentle click. Still, she stood motionless just a few feet in front of it.</p>
<p>“You told me once that you liked the idea of my waking you up in the middle of the night,” she murmured. Her voice was quiet, even, but she felt a brave fierceness thrumming in her body. Or maybe that was just her heartbeat.</p>
<p>Which he could probably hear.</p>
<p><em>“I’m not sure which one of us has the faster pulse right now,”</em> he’d said on the Ferris wheel, the first time he’d kissed her. The first time they hadn’t been interrupted (which had happened so often she half-expected, somehow, one of the other agents to appear to pull them away from each other for work again). Frankly, she still wasn’t convinced he’d actually been nervous. How could he have been? When he looked like he did? When he was as unbelievably charming as he was? Nervous? Unthinkable.</p>
<p>Was he nervous now? If she asked, he’d probably tell her. He was always telling her things. Admitting his feelings, baldly, as though that were a small thing. As though it didn’t cost him anything to just say how he felt at any given moment. It always seemed to cost her so much.</p>
<p>But right now, somehow, it didn’t feel like it would cost her anything.</p>
<p>She looked at his face full on, tilting her chin up, up, up. Trust her to be <em>(already more than) </em>half in love with someone <em>(over) </em>a foot taller than she.</p>
<p>He was still watching her, but he no longer looked puzzled. He still looked curious. And still had…something else simmering in his dark eyes, pupils wide and dark in the dim of the room. Or maybe that was the <em>something else</em> that had his eyes so black right now. She wondered what hers looked like.</p>
<p>“Do you still like that idea?” She didn’t move her eyes from his. Who knew the middle of the night made her so fearless?</p>
<p>His eyes moved, though, dipping down to her mouth as she spoke, watching her lips move as though trying to memorize the shape of every syllable.</p>
<p>“Is it still just an idea, Holland?” he asked softly, his eyes back on hers, dark and warm, deep as some philosopher’s abyss. A bottomless pool as unfathomable as the idea that he had been nervous to kiss her that first night. Holland wanted to drown herself in Nate’s eyes.</p>
<p>She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth quirking up. “I hope not.”</p>
<p>He moved then, taking the single step that separated them, still just on the other side of his bedroom door, his eyes still on hers as he brought his hands up to the side of her face, thumbs brushing the corners of her mouth. The curiosity was still there, as was the <em>something else</em>, but neither were a flicker now.</p>
<p>“Which one of us has the faster pulse this time?” she murmured, and he smiled against her mouth as he kissed her.</p>
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